Judges Don't Care

GARY STEIN

About Baby Emily

You really have to love how the state of Florida decides who can and who can't be a parent.

According to the laws of our state - and it is right there on the books, Florida Statute 62.042 - homosexuals are not allowed to adopt children.

Only two states have that nauseating law - New Hampshire is the other - and the ultra conservatives and "family values" hypocrites love it.

A couple of judges have declared the law unconstitutional in their counties, but almost everywhere in Florida, a gay or lesbian is considered unfit as an adoptive parent.

Yessir, those gay people just aren't proper parents in our state. Can't have our kids growing up with a gay person in the house. Never can tell what will happen.

So gays are, essentially, unfit to be parents. The law says that.

But a couple of judges at the 4th District Court of Appeal this week said that if a father is a convicted rapist, well, we don't worry about those things.

Is this a great state or what?

Judges don't care about kid

By a 2-1 margin, the judges said this week that a natural father's character and his fitness as a parent were not relevant issues in an adoption case. The only thing relevant is whether the father waived his parental rights.

And because of that ruling, a 22-month-old Plantation girl, Baby Emily, might be taken from her adoptive parents - Stephen and Angel Welsh, the only parents Emily has known - and be turned over to her father, Gary Bjorklund of Pompano Beach. Seems as if Bjorklund had not actually abandoned his parental rights.

So you forget that he was convicted of rape in 1977. Forget the mother's accusations of abuse.

Forget it all.

The judges don't care about that. They don't care about the Welshes. And they surely don't care about Baby Emily.

The judges only see pieces of paper.

They don't care that biology doesn't make you a fit parent.

They don't care that the happiness and well-being of the child should be the most important consideration in these cases.

They don't care that they might be taking this small child from a very happy family, and setting up a very ugly custody battle.

None of that matters. Surely not Emily.

"It is irrevelant to consider evidence that tends to prove with whom, among the contenders, it will be in the best interest of the child to be placed for adoption," the ruling says, in part.

Yeah, the best interest of the kid means zilch.

Unless you have a gay person involved. Then that person would be considered an unfit parent.

The law of Florida says so.

`Appalling' for court to do this

Supposedly, Bjorklund told the Welshes' lawyer that he had not consented to the adoption, which had been agreed to by the mother. The lawyer, Charlotte Danciu, allegedly did not tell the Welshes or the court of that conversation.

That was two years ago. And now, it may open the way for a battle over Baby Emily.

"That's appalling," I was told by state Rep. Suzanne Jacobs, D-Delray Beach, who last year tried to change the law barring homosexuals from adopting.

"I was told unequivocably that not only wouldn't the bill [allowing for homosexual adoptions) pass, it wouldn't even be heard."

An outrage. As is the situation with Baby Emily.

People should be appalled at the possibility of a little girl being taken away from her home and her adoptive parents, after two years, and eventually being sent to live with a father with a violent past. And the state says if that happens, so be it.

Yeah, people should be outraged.

But the state would be a lot more concerned about your outrage if a gay person were involved.